Coalition Urges Parliament to Overhaul Forestry Law
The ‘Reset Kehutanan’ coalition is urging the House of Representatives (DPR) to completely revise the Forestry Law. The coalition believes that the discussions regarding Law Number 41 of 1999 have yet to address the fundamental issues of forestry governance.
“Particularly regarding the protection of indigenous rights and the recognition of customary forests as their living space,” said Nisa Zonzoa, a researcher at Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), after submitting a demand letter to Commission IV and the Forestry Bill Working Committee (Panja) at the DPR Complex in Senayan, Jakarta, on Thursday, 4 June 2026.
The coalition maintains that conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency in forestry management remain chronic problems across various regions in Indonesia. Forests, which hold vast biodiversity, are frequently subjected to economic exploitation and political interests, threatening the livelihoods of indigenous communities who depend on these areas.
Nisa stated that the current Forestry Law is unable to address the challenges of deforestation, the seizure of indigenous lands, and the increasingly evident climate crisis. Large-scale land clearing in Papua, Sumatra, and Kalimantan continues unabated, highlighting the need for a comprehensive overhaul of the Forestry Law to ensure future regulations are more transparent, accountable, and less prone to conflicts of interest.
According to the researcher, a thorough revision is necessary to close loopholes for corruption within the forestry sector, including transactional practices involving political elites and financiers. In several instances, land concessions, mining permits, and Cultivation Rights (HGU) are allegedly used as political commodities in exchange for campaign funding.
This practice, known as ‘political ijon’ (pre-emptive political deals), is believed to accelerate forest destruction and shrink the living space of indigenous peoples. The coalition also highlighted various development policies that accelerate forest conversion, including National Strategic Projects (PSN) initiated during President Joko Widodo’s era and continued under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration.
One project under scrutiny is the development of a food estate in Merauke, South Papua, which covers approximately 2.29 million hectares. For civil society groups, the expansion of these large-scale projects demonstrates that the current legal framework for forestry remains weak in guaranteeing indigenous rights, environmental sustainability, and public participation in decision-making.
The impact of these policies is also depicted in the documentary film ‘Pesta Babi’ by Dandhy Laksono and Cypri Paju Dale. The film records the struggles of indigenous communities in South Papua, specifically the Malind, Awyu, Muyu, and Yei tribes, in defending their forests and ancestral lands against the expansion of large-scale food and plantation projects. For activists, the stories presented in the film serve as a real reflection of the weak legal protections for indigenous peoples amidst massive development based on natural resource exploitation.